
Glass. 
Book 



1*5 i 



J^± 



2 > V 



[Reprinted from " Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 

1904," Vol. VI.] 



, ° CT;i H906 * 



THE RELATIONS OF AGRICULTURE TO OTHER SCIENCES 

BY CHARLES WILLIAM DABNEY 

[Charles William Dabney, President, University of Cincinnati, b. June 19, 1855, 
Hampden Sidney, Virginia. A.B. Hampden Sidney College, 1873; Ph.D. Got- 
tingen; LL.D. Yale and Johns Hopkins, 1901; Post-graduate, University of 
Virginia, Berlin, and Go ttingen. State Chemist and Director of Experiment 
Station, North Carolina; Professor of Agricultural Chemistry and Director of 
Experiment Station, University of Tennessee, 1887-90; President, University 
of Tennessee, 1887-1904; Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, 1894-97; President 
Summer School of South. Member of Washington Academy of Science; 
Southern Education Board; American Institute of Social Scienee; Fellow of 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, etc. Author of scientific 
and educational papers in periodicals and pamphlets and addresses on educa- 
tional subjects.] 

The subject assigned me is Agriculture in Relation to Science. 
For this subject, almost cosmical in its vastness, I offer no apology, 
but ask your indulgence while I attempt to point out a few of the 
achievements of the new agriculture and to show their relation 
to the advancement of civilization. While the progress has con- 
sisted partly in opening up such lands as are not highly cultivated 
to people who can cultivate them, its chief progress has been in 
the improvement of man's methods of cultivating the soil and of 
using plants and animals to support his ever-increasing numbers. 
Since population is increasing rapidly and more food is required 
each year to support the life of the people born into the world, 
unless the production of food becomes greater in proportion to the 
unit man and the unit acre, starvation awaits the race. In 1899 
Sir William Crookes argued seriously, before a meeting of the 
British Association, that the world's wheat-supply is already threat- 
ened by the failing fertility of the available soil. As the low aver- 
age of less than thirteen bushels per acre means starvation for the 
rapidly increasing population of wheat-eaters, when he found the 
limit of available wheat-lands nearly reached, he saw no hope for 
the race except by increasing the fertility of the soil. 

Man has, however, shown a wonderful ability to utilize the different 



SSll 

2 AGRICULTURE 

food-materials and to produce increased supplies from a limited area 
when he has been compelled to do so. The Harlemer polders support 
nearly two and a half persons to the acre, and in portions of China 
and Japan five or six persons often get their living from this extent 
of soil. These lands, however, are exceptionally fertile. But even on 
an average acre of land, where the ordinary farmer would make only 
five dollars' worth of produce, gardeners can easily make five hundred 
dollars' worth. For these and many other reasons we cannot be very 
much alarmed about mere food for the race. 

It is a narrow view of agriculture, however, which regards this 
great art only as a means of providing men with the simplest means of 
existence. We are interested in the progress of agriculture not only 
as the means of supplying the food necessary for the increasing 
peoples of the earth, but as the art which chiefly supports man's 
advancement along all lines, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, as 
well as physical. "Man shall not live by bread alone." It is a con- 
dition of civilization that man is not satisfied with a mere subsist- 
ence, but that his wants increase with his development. The modern 
man is not satisfied with the simplest food or the plainest raiment, or 
the barest shelter. He wants attractive and delightful food, because 
such food promotes health, happiness, and the development of his 
finer nature. Hence there have been developed the various special 
branches of agriculture and horticulture and the many arts of milling, 
manufacture, preparing, and preserving the products of the soil so as 
to make food-substances tempting and delicious, as well as conven- 
ient for use. The American people, for example, owe much of their 
success as purveyors to the clever methods of preparing food-mate- 
rials of all kinds, and to their skill and taste in presenting them to the 
public. It is not enough that quantity alone should be considered, 
for, in these days, quality plays an increasingly important part in 
food-production. Hence the arts of producing choice meats, " hygienic 
milk," cereals of greater food-value, etc., which arts may properly 
be termed the "higher agriculture;" hence also the arts of pomology, 
viticulture, etc., with the resultant practical arts of wine-making, 
canning, and preserving, which may be properly considered as a 
"higher horticulture." These arts, with the important domestic art 
of cooking, have all been developed in response to man's demand 
for more refined and delicious food, a demand which is certain to 
grow more exacting with the progress of civilization. The same law 
of progress characterizes our demand for raiment and for shelter. 
With the development of the esthetic sense and the growth of truer 
ideas of hygiene and comfort, the demand for more beautiful clothing 
and more sanitary houses will grow steadily. 

But this is not all that can be said about the higher results of the 
new agriculture. Progress in agriculture contributes largely to the 

]j0 fcrai i 
14 F 



RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 3 

intellectual, moral, and spiritual development of a people, as well as 
to their physical evolution. Perhaps the most encouraging character- 
istic of the times is the improvement in farm-life in respect to the 
means of culture. Formerly the isolation and loneliness of country 
life was the chief cause of that exodus from country to city which 
until recently continued to depopulate our rural communities. It is 
a sad fact that the majority of the inmates of our insane asylums in 
these states are women, a large per cent of them farmers' wives, sent 
to the hospitals as a result of melancholy induced by the narrowness 
and monotony of their lives. But now all these conditions are im- 
proving. The consolidated school and free transportation of pupils 
is fast converting the little "red schoolhouse" into a centre of vital 
community life. The rural free delivery of mails takes not only the 
letters of friends, but the daily papers and illustrated magazines, 
into all the farm-homes; the telephone makes visiting easy for lone- 
some women; and the traveling library stimulates many to improve 
their minds, who would otherwise live in stupid ignorance. Many of 
the features which formerly made farm-life so distasteful and narrow- 
ing, even maddening at times, are thus being removed; and many of 
the advantages, which heretofore could be had only in the city, are 
being put within the reach of those who spend their lives on the farm. 

Every one concedes in a general way that the prosperity of one 
class diffuses itself throughout the whole community; but good 
harvests are far more valuable and important to the people than 
prosperity anywhere else. Agriculture not only provides food and 
raw material for those engaged in manufacture and commerce, but 
good harvests increase the purchasing power of the largest and most 
intelligent body of our citizenship, scattered throughout the whole 
land. The relation of the farmer to the merchant, the miner, and the 
manufacturer, is indeed a reciprocal one. Each consumes what the 
other produces. In the circle of trade, whatever produces a demand 
at any one point accelerates the amount and velocity of exchange in 
all directions. Good crops, by supplying the manufacturer, mer- 
chant, and miner with food or raw materials, are, the world over, the 
chief factor in profitable exchange. 

But abundant harvests signify even more than this. Every series of 
exchanges must have a beginning, and the first step in starting the 
movement of products must be taken by those who supply the ele- 
mentary and vital wants of the race. The miner will dig no ore, the 
manufacturer make no machinery, the merchant store no goods, until 
he knows or thinks he knows that somebody wants these things ; but 
the farmer, being very sure that everybody wants food at all times, is 
sure to plant and to reap, whether there is an expressed demand for 
his produce or not. The nature of the demand, it is true, will decide 
for him which seed he should sow and whether on one or two acres; 



4 AGRICULTURE 

but sow he will, as surely as the spring comes; and when he sows, he 
is almost certain to reap. As nature does more work for the farmer 
than for any other producer, he finds it easier to turn out an almost 
regular supply of his products. The sun himself is the commander- 
in-chief of the agricultural army. The changing seasons order the 
farmer's plowing, sowing, and reaping, and fundamentally every 
series of human exchanges starts with the farmer. 

Good crops are always and everywhere makers of good times. 
While this is true for all peoples and all lands, it is particularly true 
of America, which from natural causes is the greatest agricultural 
country in the world. In this country agricultural prosperity touches, 
and for a long time to come will continue to touch, the lives and in- 
terests of a larger proportion of the people than in any other land. 
It causes immediately an advance in the standards of living and 
a broadening in the scope of the demands of the largest number of 
intelligent, progressive people; and it produces a home market of such 
tremendous proportions as to furnish independently of foreign nations 
a sufficient motive for the development of gigantic manufactures 
and enormous trade. Further the American farmer is a man of so 
much intelligence and such large wants that his standards of living 
increase very rapidly with the improvement of his financial con- 
dition. He is liberal to his family, ambitious for his children, and he 
desires above everything else to raise their standard of living and to 
increase their advantages in all ways beyond those which he himself 
enjoyed in his youth. 

Another cause of the great economic influence of the American 
farmer is found in the fact that as a rule he owns his own land. In 
addition to the profit upon his labors he receives the rent on his land. 
This not only puts a larger sum at his disposal, but it also creates a 
motive for additional expenditure for improvements and equipments 
upon that land. The American farmer, moreover, seldom hoards his 
money, but promptly expends his surplus for improvements, or else 
puts it in the bank, where others can use it. He is, all things considered, 
the wisest and safest investor among us, and his prosperity is 
therefore the greatest blessing that can possibly come to the nation. 
Our conclusion is thus that the progress of agriculture is the greatest 
practical concern of civilized man, and especially of the American. 

We have found that the problem of agriculture is to produce more 
and better supplies for the support of human life under conditions 
that will enable the farmer and his family, and with them the people 
of the whole country, to live the happiest and most complete life 
possible, a life which, as the decades and centuries pass, shall be con- 
stantly expanding, strengthening, and growing deeper and richer. 
The question, then, is " How shall agriculture do this ? " What pros- 
pect is there that this art shall be able to supply these ever-increasing 



RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 5 

demands, not merely for food to keep the body alive, but for all the 
resources needed to support a life growing ever more true and beau- 
tiful? What encouragement, then, can we find in recent progress, for 
believing that this world-old art will improve with the years and the 
demands of the race ? 

The improvement of agriculture depends, of course, upon the soil, 
including location as to latitude, longitude, climate, etc., upon the 
plants and animals used; but most of all, after these things are pro- 
vided, upon the farmer and his methods. The most we can do here is 
to give a few illustrations of the advances made in recent years in 
improving the soil and increasing its fertility, in developing plants, 
and in training the farmer himself and improving his methods. We 
hope in this way to give some idea of what we may expect to accom- 
plish in the future for the advancement of agriculture. 

Agriculture, the oldest of the arts, was the very latest to apply the 
discoveries of science. This is due to two causes. In the first place, 
agriculture is the most difficult of the arts, and involves, one way and 
another, directly and indirectly, the application of all the sciences. 
Secondly, its workers have in the past been less trained in scientific 
methods than those in other callings. Until recently agriculture has 
been almost wholly an empirical art and only in very recent times has 
the farmer received any special' training for his profession. Always 
intensely conservative he has learned new methods very slowly. 
Many breaches have, however, been made in the wall of empiricism 
which has surrounded him for centuries and the farmer who formerly 
derided book-farming has now opened his mind to the lessons of 
science. 

Since the farmer commenced to use the teachings of science, the 
progress of agriculture has been extremely rapid; and as we may 
expect that agriculture will make gigantic strides in the next decade, 
the new agriculture, which is based oh science rather than empiri- 
cism and which is just now being introduced, is destined to advance 
all the other industries and give the race a new forward impulse. 

This we must believe from the progress already made. Consider, 
for example, the progress made since the time of Liebig in the study 
of soils. Liebig based all his proposals for the conservation of fertility 
and the improvement of the soil upon chemical composition, and his 
teachings did much to improve our agricultural methods. According 
to his theory the soil was composed of dead, inert matter, and the 
question was how to provide the so-called mineral food of plants in 
sufficient quantity and available form. For fifty years all methods of 
soil improvement and culture were based upon this idea. The soil 
was supposed to be devoid of all vitality until the crop appeared, 
and the chief business of the farmer was to destroy every other form 
of life. The question of nitrogen-supply had come to be looked upon 



6 AGRICULTURE 

as lying at the very foundation of agriculture and demanding the 
most careful consideration because the conditions of life in the civil- 
ized quarters of the globe were thought to cause a constant loss 
of nitrogen. Every collection of animals, brute and human, was 
destroying the combined nitrogen-supply; every town and city was 
dissipating enormous quantities of it through its sewers and into 
the atmosphere. Tons of this valuable element were being burned in 
explosives, and nitrates enough to grow bread for a whole city were 
being destroyed in single battles. At one time there were many 
who, like Sir William Crookes, predicted a nitrogen famine in the 
soil which in time would lead to a bread famine throughout the 
world. 

One does not have to read far in the agricultural literature of to-day 
before finding that all these ideas have been entirely changed. The 
soil is now known to be filled so completely with living things as to 
entitle it to be considered a vital mass itself, and even those ele- 
ments in it not endowed with life now have the highest significance 
as the necessary environment of the living organisms which they 
help to nourish. We know that there are countless organisms in the 
soil, rendering many different kinds of service in preparing it to be the 
home of the plants, and, what is more important, in preparing the food 
for the plants themselves. Some of these organisms dissolve the 
mineral matter of the soils, others exert their activity on the organic 
nitrogen in the humus of the soil; others develop parasitically or 
symbiotically with growing plants, like the legumes, herding in 
colonies upon their roots and securing by their vitality, in a way we 
do not fully understand, the oxidation of the free nitrogen of the 
atmosphere. Still others have the ability, independently, apparently 
without the aid of plant vitality, either to secure the oxidation of 
atmospheric nitrogen or to produce ammonia. Investigations along 
these lines, which have now led to the systematic distribution of 
nitrogen-fixing bacteria for inoculating the soil, have, for a time at 
least, dispelled all dreams of early famines, and have given the world 
an assurance of a sufficiency of bread for at least an indefinite period. 
The refined scientific investigations of Nobbe in Germany have now 
been made practically effective in fixing nitrogen in the soil. Soil 
or seed can now be inoculated with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria 
just as dough is inoculated with yeast. 

Mention might also be made in this connection of the proposals to 
combine the nitrogen and oxygen of the atmosphere by the electric 
spark, as is now being actually attempted at Niagara. Definite 
reports of results are not yet obtainable, but if this can be done on 
a large scale, we shall be able to utilize the great water-powers to 
make this valuable food for plants from the inexhaustible stores 
of the atmosphere. 



RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 7 

Great progress has also been made in this country in the study of 
the physics of the soil, with the result that vast new areas, like the 
alkali soils, are being reclaimed; and crops have been found for many 
other soils which were supposed to be useless. The proper compre- 
hension of the relation of the soil to moisture has expelled many of 
the empirical methods of culture, and has given us a new conception 
of the meaning of tillage. The same may be said of the relation of the 
soil to heat. 

The main object in all farming being the production of larger 
yields and better quality of crops, scientific men have given a large 
share of their energy in recent years to investigations having these 
objects directly in view. This work has included the testing of field- 
crops, fruits, and vegetables, for the purpose of finding those best 
suited to given regions and conditions; the improvement of methods 
of culture, the production of improved varieties by selection and 
breeding, and the better utilization of the product. Burbank's mar- 
velous work in new flowers and fruits, trees and plants of all kinds, 
has at last received the popular recognition it has long deserved. 
The possibilities in this direction now appear almost limitless. 

The staple crops of the country, such as wheat and maize, or 
Indian corn, have been the subjects of much investigation, covering 
every phase of their improvement by selection, breeding, tillage, 
fertilization, harvesting, curing, preparation, and utilization. The 
results have been of vast practical value. Those in the cases of wheat 
and corn will illustrate the progress made. 

Not only has it been shown that the quality of wheat for special 
purposes can be materially changed at will to suit necessary con- 
ditions or special wants, but the productivity of races or types of the 
grain can be fixed by systematic seed-selection. For plants can be 
bred just like animals. Burbank's wonderful work is so well known 
now that we need not describe it. At the Minnesota Experiment 
Station new varieties of wheat have been produced by breeding and 
selection, which, we are told, will increase the yield in the hard-wheat 
region of the Northwest by 'from three to five bushels per acre. Re- 
duced to a practical basis, this means an increase in the wealth of the 
three states, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota, of from 
$20,000,000 to $40,000,000 annually. The yield and quality of wheats 
in that region has already shown a marked improvement as a result of 
the distribution of seed of two or three improved varieties. As varie- 
ties suitable for other sections will undoubtedly be originated in due 
time, the results that will accrue when these methods have been 
extended to all the wheat-producing areas of the United States can 
hardly be imagined. The wheat crop of this country for the year 
1902 was 675,000,000 bushels, valued at $425,000,000. The average 
yield of wheat is only a little over thirteen bushels per acre, con- 



8 AGRICULTURE 

siderably smaller than that of England where it is twenty-six, and 
that of Germany where it is thirty-one. If, by the introduction of 
these improved varieties and of better methods of tillage, the average 
yield of this country can be increased no more than two bushels per 
acre, the total increase for the entire country will be 100,000,000 
bushels per year, worth about $100,000,000. This would seem to be 
entirely practicable. If the excellent prospect of increasing the 
nitrogen-supply in the soil for cereals does not allay all anxiety re- 
garding starvation, the results in breeding new varieties of wheat and 
other food-plants should certainly put that fear to sleep for a long 
time to come. 

No less interesting and instructive is the recent work in corn- 
breeding conducted at the Illinois and Kansas stations. Although 
corn, which is this year yielding probably two and three-fourths 
billions of bushels, worth approximately one and a half billions of 
dollars, heads the list of cereals in value, until the valuable work of 
these experiment stations was announced there had been no mate- 
rial improvement in the production of this crop in twenty years. The 
Illinois station has shown that if the methods of selection practiced 
by it, which are quite feasible and within the reach of every farmer, 
were followed throughout that single state, the increase in production 
in one year would amount approximately to $20,000 x 000. 

Methods have also been found for changing the composition of the 
grain itself to meet special requirements : such as an increased yield 
of oil or of protein. Since the manufacture of oil from corn has 
become an industry, the amount of this constituent is a matter of 
considerable consequence. By selection the oil-content has been 
doubled in some varieties. 

The most important question, however, connected with the im- 
provement of corn is that which relates to its value as a well-balanced 
food. Its relative deficiency in protein has probably been the chief 
reason this grain has not been more extensively used as a human 
food in continental countries. It has, therefore, long been a question 
how to increase the protein in a grain of corn at the expense of the 
starch and fats. As the nitrogen, like the other constituents in the 
grain, varies in the different varieties, the way is thus opened for the 
control of the variations in this important element. The Illinois and 
Kansas stations have been engaged for some time upon this problem. 
By the selection of varieties containing a high percentage of protein, 
it has been found possible to develop strains containing an increased 
amount of this desirable substance. The protein-content of some 
varieties of corn, now apparently well fixed, has been increased fully 
2.5 per cent, that is, from about 10 to about 12.50 per cent, which 
makes corn equal to the average wheat in this respect. In special 
cases it has been increased to even as much as 17 per cent. Should 



RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 9 

wheat then fail us, Indian corn will be ready to take its place with an 
equal amount of protein. 

The development of the rice industry in Louisiana and Texas fur- 
nishes a good example of the building-up of a new industry by the 
introduction of a new type of seed and of improved methods of cul- 
tivation and harvesting. Rice was one of the earliest introductions 
into this country and was grown for nearly two hundred years in 
South Carolina and the adjacent states with little improvement of 
method. It was thought that these states were the only ones that 
possessed the requisite irrigable lands. It has recently been discov- 
ered, however, that the prairie lands of southern Louisiana and 
Texas will produce large crops of rice, if provided with the requisite 
water, which is now obtained from bayous or artesian wells. The 
water is drained off in time to permit the ground to dry and the crop 
is then harvested with machinery similar to that used with wheat. 
As a result of these improved methods, the total rice-production of 
this country has increased in five years from about 100,000,000 
pounds to about 400,000,000 pounds. The two states mentioned 
produce over 90 per cent of this. As the American people import 
some 40,000,000 pounds of rice annually, there is still room for 
the development of this industry. It is estimated that there are 
available in these two states alone 3,000,000 acres of land suitable 
for rice-growing. This is perhaps the best single illustration of the 
introduction of new races of seed and the use of improved methods 
of cultivation in their production. 

I wish next to suggest another place where scientific investigations 
of a similar character are greatly needed. Cotton-culture needs pre- 
cisely the same sort of attention from scientific men and expert 
agriculturists as has been given to wheat, corn, and rice. Con- 
sidering the immense importance of this crop, it is remarkable that 
it has not received more systematic study. 

A group of states in the southern portion of America, constituting 
less than one fourth of the total area of the United States, grows from 
60 to 70 per cent of the cotton consumed in the world. The total 
value of the annual crop is exceeded, among the cultivated crops of 
the United States, only by Indian corn and occasionally by wheat, 
both of which are grown in almost every state. Since it is fair to 
assume that- all the fibers have been pretty well tested as to their 
capabilities and uses, we may conclude that cotton, now the preferred 
fiber, is destined to grow steadily in favor with civilized man, and 
will continue to be used by him in increasing amounts. We are 
constantly finding new uses for it, and may safely predict that the 
demand for cotton will increase rather than diminish. It has been 
estimated that to meet the world's demand, when its standard of 
consumption has been raised to that of the civilized nations, will 



10 AGRICULTURE 

require an annual crop of at least 45,000,000 bales. It is therefore 
eminently desirable that the Southern States of America should 
meet this demand. Will they do it? 

Present tendencies in the cotton world, at least, seem to answer 
"No." During the last four years the consumption of cotton seems 
to be rapidly overtaking the production, with the consequence that 
many of the mills in the United States, in England, and on the Con- 
tinent have been running on short time. There are two principal 
causes which have contributed to this shortage. The most important 
has been the large increase, amounting now to at least 500,000 bales 
per annum, in the world's consumption. Of this increase, the greater 
part was in the Southern States themselves, where the consumption 
of cotton was doubled within the last ten years. These states are now 
taking nearly twenty per cent of the cotton produced by them. The 
second cause of the shortage is the failure of the American cotton- 
planter to respond to the increased demand, and perhaps a slight 
falling-off in the yield per acre. In fact there are some reasons to 
believe that the yield per acre has been slowly but steadily declining 
for a number of years. 

Although in many sections from 500 to 800 pounds of cotton may be 
obtained by good cultivation, the average yield of cotton in the 
United States is only about 190 pounds of lint per acre. There is 
evidently great room for improvement in the methods of cultivation 
and fertilization, and especially for improvement of the plant itself. 
Any one who has traveled through the South will acknowledge that 
the methods of cotton-culture are the poorest and most backward 
used with any staple crop in our country. 

Cotton is limited by climatic conditions to that portion of America 
south of latitude 37. The essential features of the climate in this 
section are a long, warm season and a peculiar distribution of the 
rainfall. Statistics show that the fluctuations in the yield per acre in 
a given section are less in the case of cotton than in that of almost 
any other product of the soil. The production of cotton may be due to 
the greater uniformity of all the climatic conditions obtaining in the 
cotton-belt, but the chief determining condition as between different 
sections of our country is the amount of light and heat distributed 
over the required number of days. For cotton is a sun plant. As a 
rule a certain amount of sunshine produces, upon a given territory, a 
certain amount of cotton. The distribution of rainfall is also import- 
ant, but sunlight is the chief factor The plant requires an abundant 
supply of moisture during the growing stage, but can stand a good 
deal of drought after the middle of summer is passed. Now the sec- 
tion of the country providing these conditions measures only about 
500,000 square miles, less than one third of the total settled area of 
the United States. Some 50 per cent of this area is contained in farms, 



RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 11 

and about 21 per cent is improved; but only about five per cent of 
the total area, or one tenth of the area in farms and one fourth of the 
area of the improved lands, is annually cultivated in cotton. If the 
whole area in farms in this section were cultivated in cotton, it would 
produce at least 80,000,000 bales. So far, therefore, as soil and 
climatic conditions are concerned, the Southern States can produce 
seven or eight times as much cotton as they now do. 

But soil and climate are not the only conditions. It requires men 
and mules to make a cotton crop. It is generally recognized that 
the labor used in the production of cotton is something over fifty 
per cent of the total expense of growing the crop. This exceeds the cost 
of labor in growing corn and wheat, and also in many manufacturing 
industries. But statistics of population show that there is labor 
enough available in the South to handle an increase in the cotton 
crop such as the cotton-belt is capable of producing under favorable 
conditions. The Negro is well adapted for working in the cotton- 
fields, and his children are the only successful cotton-pickers known. 
The great need is that this labor be better trained and organized. 
Although the supply of mules and horses is inadequate at present for 
the production of a crop of this size, they might be raised within a 
few years. 

We come thus to the question why the South does not actually 
produce more cotton to supply the world's increasing demand. It is 
commonly stated that the low prices which prevailed for a number of 
years led the planters to diversify their farming and to devote more 
of their means and energy to the production of general farm-supplies. 
This is true ; but when this has been successfully accomplished, the 
planters should be in an even better position to produce the crop 
demanded. Where then is the trouble ? Experts seem to agree that 
the chief difficulties are the impoverishment of the cotton-soils 
through continued cropping under the renting system, and the 
running-out of the seed. Observation in the cotton-belt leads us to 
believe that fully two thirds of the planters use seed taken entirely 
at random from the public gins, about which they know nothing 
whatever. 

It is safe to estimate that the cotton crop could be doubled on the 
same acreage by the use of good seed and careful methods of tillage 
and fertilization. Questions of tillage and fertilization must be left to 
the farmers chiefly, but the experiment stations should take up the 
question of improving the seed. 

Certain definite things should be kept in mind in the process of 
cotton-seed development. Among these are an increased yield of 
fiber and of seed, an increased length of fiber with uniformity, the 
strength of the fiber, the season of maturity, adaptation to soil and 
climate, and resistance to diseases. It is probable that cotton having 



12 AGRICULTURE 

these different qualities will have to be bred to suit the soil and 
climatic conditions of each section. Here then is a great task, one, 
however, which offers magnificent rewards. It is firmly believed that 
the scientist and the cotton-planter will together be fully equal to its 
solution. 

We have sought by these few illustrations to show what science has 
already contributed to the advancement of agriculture and how it 
may be expected to do still more for it in the future. No one now 
doubts that the progress of agriculture in the future depends chiefly 
upon the discoveries in science and their application to the practical 
problems of the farmer. 

The discoveries of science, however, and the demonstrations of the 
United States Department of Agriculture through its experiment 
stations, will be of little value to the American farmer unless he is 
well enough educated to understand them and skilled enough to 
apply them. More secondary agricultural schools and schools for the 
training of horticulturists, dairymen, and other specialists are needed 
in all our states. The higher agricultural institutions and departments 
of agriculture in our universities are answering an admirable purpose 
in training experts and investigators; but so far we have very few 
secondary agricultural schools. It is believed that the next develop- 
ment will be along this line. Certainly the greatest need of American 
agriculture is farmers trained to habits of observation and skilled in 
the application of science to their business. What the new agriculture 
will do for the advancement of the race when even a majority of 
farmers have learned its methods confounds the imagination. This 
greatest of productive industries will lay a new foundation, deep and 
broad, upon which man will build a new life, growing ever nobler and 
truer "unto the perfect day." 



